Skype CEO Apologizes 'Profusely,' Plans Credit Vouchers for Users

Skype CEO Tony Bates said Skype service had been restored to about most users and apologized to users affected by the outage, he said today in a YouTube video the company released.

Skype CEO Tony Bates said Skype service had been restored for most users and announced a plan to grant credit vouchers to customers affected by the outage, he said today in a YouTube video the company released.

"We know this has caused a major impact to many of you, and we apologize profusely for this," Bates said. "I know this has been a tough 24 hours for many of our users, and there's been many heartfelt stories from our loyal customers who use the service literally each and every day."

Bates also said that the company was considering giving out credit vouchers to "loyal" paying customers, though details weren't forthcoming.

Bates didn't elaborate about the technical problem that caused the outage beyond what the company has already said, though he said the No. 1 focus of the company was to identify the problem and stabilize Skype service. He said 16.5 million users were now able to use the service. Bates went on to say that was 80 percent of the company would "typically be" at this time of day.

Skype's core services of voice and video calling as well as instant messaging will be the first ones re-established, Bates said, with group video calling and offline IM taking longer to fix. Skype has retasked servers that usually manage those services to stabilize the core functions.